Lytheria Halloween, 2015

This year’s theme for Lytheria “Trick or Treat” was “Men in Black,” after the movies of the same name.

Some of us, such as myself, Charles Tritt, and Julie Ann Hunter, were “outside” agents, meaning we were human looking, and dressed in black suits, white shirts, and black ties. (Not that this was a huge costume stretch for me--.)

The porch interior was done up as an MIB headquarters, with strange zapguns hanging on the walls, computer monitors running sci-fi screensavers, and a registration desk rigged up with a couple of plasma balls as “scanners”. The inside staff, including Georgie, Lee Schneider, and Mike Davis, were more or less obvious aliens. Lee had knee length white hair, Georgie was wearing a bright yellow bird mask and wig above her black suit, and Mike, working the desk, wore a variation of his “Killer Croc” outfit.

The routine began with Julie Ann and a couple of loose aliens shepherding the trick-or-treaters to the house steps. I was working the steps landing, and would tell them, “All aliens must register. What planet are you from?” Some of the kids were quick enough to give an answer of some sort. Others, I “sorted”: Bozonia, Zombezia, Bat World, Planet of the Killer Clowns, or whatever seemed appropriate. Those who answered “Earth,” I scanned and replied, “Nope, alien, gotta register, step up.” ( I was actually running a “tricorder” app on my cell phone, but few people noticed.)

Charles Tritt staffed the door, giving an intro to life on Earth. Then Lee let them in, and Georgie and Mike processed them by having them put a hand on one “scanner sphere” so that their genotype was entered into the database, and then to put a hand on the other so that alien fingerprints could be “erased”. When things got more backed up, both spheres were used for scanning in. The new resident aliens were given a sample of Earth food (the candy bar) and ushered out through the “recently decommissioned” but still ominously flickering “disintegration chamber.”Halloween fell on the one chill, rainy day out of a two-week period, so attendance was down, although we still ended up giving away approximately 500 candy bars.

Since, for a change, the trick-or-treat fell on Saturday, the Halloween party was that same evening. Georgie and I rushed home, got some dinner, and changed costumes for the party. We both went as characters from animated films of the year.

Georgie went as “La Muerte,” ruler of The Land of the Remembered, from the movie “The Book of Life.” She assembled a great looking costume in my opinion, and the makeup I did for her worked pretty well. (We decided not to try to attach electric candles to the already extravagantly bedecked hat, as adding too much weight--.)

I went as “Yokai”, a.k.a. Prof. Robert Callaghan, from “Big Hero 6,” and was also quite pleased with the way the costume came together. We had a good time at the party, but didn’t stay awfully long, due to being tired from the day.